Glasgow is dying
The last couple of times we’ve gone into Glasgow on a Saturday, we’ve noticed how Sauchiehall Street and Buchanan Street have been half empty. We were wondering whether it had anything to do with the recession.
However, the Silverburn shopping centre was so crowded that the cars were almost blocking the motorway exit.
So it’s the combination of more and more expensive parking charges in central Glasgow and more and bigger shopping centres surrounding the city that is finally taking its toll.
It was probably not obvious during the boom years when there were enough consumers for both, but now people are having to make a choice, and they’re opting for the shopping centres.
It’s made worse by hospitals and other organisations leaving the city centre, too.
It’s really dangerous. If the trend is not reversed soon, we’ll end up with cities without centres, a bit like Los Angeles.
It’s important to make the city centre the centre of the conurbation, placing all the important institutions there, and to provide plenty of cheap parking spaces in the centre.
Of course shopping centres have a role to play, but if they start taking over as the primary shopping location, it’s time to change track.
I said I couldn’t agree more !
And that Glasgow ( and all other UK cities ) were going down the pan.
Shops are all downgraded cheapo £ type dumps.
And the city centre itself, far from being the centre of the conurbation, placing all the important institutions there, has been turned over to the drunken, drug crazed scum of an evening .,., Soon they’ll all be completely No-Go areas .,., What are our Governments doing & Where are our Police FORCES ?
Father! When were you last wandering the streets of Glasgow late at night. Ok dodgy areas at 3am maybe, but wandering back to the car at midnight after a meal in the Merchant city just isn’t like you describe. And the £ shops are taking over because the designer shops are all hanging out at Silverburn and the likes.
The downtown of Århus doesn’t appear to be having any problems, despite parking being a PITA and there being huge shopping centres on the outskirts. Wonder what the difference is…
Unless the shopping centres around Aarhus have grown since I left eight years ago, I don’t think they are big enough to really compete with the city centre.
What’s your impression of the situation in the US, btw?
The Tilst area has grown quite a bit, but the traffic situation there is horrible. I guess there aren’t really any malls as such on the outskirts (except for Gellerup^WCity Vest, which has a bad name now). Bruun’s Galleri is probably even on its effect on the rest of downtown, bringing more people in but also sucking up some shopping.
It’s a rare city in the US that has a lively downtown, at least shopping-wise. Not even Chicago really does. There’s been a lot of effort put into making everything car-friendly and convenient, so most places have malls or shop-clusters on the outskirts and nothing in the middle. I thought SimCity was a poor abstraction of cities until I moved to the US.
The same thing is happening drastically here in Hamilton (NZ).
@Lars, do you think there would be a basis for developing SimCity Europe with a different city abstraction?